"Sally?"
Sally Jackson didn't look away from the muffin tins as she replied. "Hold this bowl, Paul. Yes, Annabeth dear?" It came out as an instinctive response, and I won't lie, I felt warm and gooey every time she called me that.
But I was here on business. "Did you ever have a daughter named Riverspawn?"
Now she looked up sharply at me, frowning. She put her spoon back in the blue batter bowl. Next to me, Percy reached for it and licked it. "Riverspawn? I've never had a daughter named—actually, I've never heard that name before in my life."
"I know right? It's unbelievable," Percy mumbled, shaking his head through a mouthful of cupcake batter.
I elbowed him and reached in my bag for the photo we'd taken yesterday. Sally and Paul leaned in close. It was a photo of a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, tall and graceful. She had Percy's jet black hair and Mediterranean good looks, and if not for the fact that she shouldn't exist, she would have been like his twin sister.
"Oh, dear," murmured Sally. I watched her inspect every detail: the jut of her slender hips, the confident look she gave the camera, the supermodel-perfect flip of her black curls.
"God, she looks just like you, Percy," said Paul finally, with confusion. He looked at Sally. "But you've never…"
Sally, who was still examining the photo, shook her head. "I've never seen her before. This makes no sense. And her name, you said it was—?"
"Riverspawn Jackson. I know, it doesn't make any sense to us, either," I said sympathetically. "We weren't able to get much information out of her other than her name, and now she's unconscious in the Big House. Chiron says her aura is even stronger than even Percy's."
"Her eyes are weird, tell her about the eyes," prompted Percy.
"Oh, yeah. You can't really see it in the photo, but when she was awake we saw her eyes—they can be green like Percy's, but they change color, too."
"Silver and blue," said Percy. "Like Artemis and Thalia's eyes, and I swear they turned gray like Annabeth's when she looked at me."
"What does that mean, that she's somehow the daughter of all these gods?" asked Paul laughingly.
We all laughed, but Percy looked at me with something resembling terror.
When Riverspawn Jackson came too, we called a meeting.
Usually, we don't make a big deal of it when a new camper arrives. Chiron gives them a rundown of their newly-dangerous lives. A couple senior counselors make the time to show them around camp and introduce them to people, let them adjust to their cabins, the works. Travis and Connor Stoll steal them some toiletries, both to make them feel welcome and to stick it to Argus.
But this time, all thirteen major cabin leaders met in the Big House. Even cabin leaders from the minor cabins made sure to show up. People milled around uncertainly, murmuring phrases to each other like Jackson and powerful and Who names their kid Riverspawn? The amount of people there, and the sinister tone of the meeting, was reminiscent of war preparations from the last Giant War. Percy made sure to point that out to me darkly before he took his seat across from Jason at the head of the table. I slid into my seat in between Katie Gardner and Thalia, who muttered to me disbelievingly, "Who names their kid Riverspawn?" I laughed and told her to be quiet.
"So, hi," began Riverspawn, who was standing at the front of the room, twirling her body like a little girl. "My name is Riverspawn Jackson and I'm eighteen."
The subject of the meeting was Why do you exist? and Who are you really?, but we figured it would be rude to start off the orientation with an interrogation like that. Instead, I raised my hand and asked, "So, how did you get here, Riverspawn?"
Her eyes were steely gray when she looked at me. "Well, I was vacationing in Montauk Beach when I was attacked by something big." Her voice was soft and melodic. It could have sprouted wings. "I didn't know what it was. But it chased me all the way up here, and I killed it by flipping up on top of its head, breaking its horn off, and then rolling down onto the ground. I came up in a kneel and stabbed the thing through the chest. It turned into dust in the wind." Riverspawn shuddered. "And my mom…"
"Who were you vacationing with?" asked Katie Gardner gently.
"My brother." She looked at Percy, and her eyes turned an iridescent sea-green—a shade I knew intimately. "Percy Jackson."
Percy's eyes, for their part, gave one huge twitch. In the background, I tried not to notice Travis slipping Connor a couple bills.
Next to him, Nico di Angelo shook his head. "Riverspawn"—he seemed to choke a little on the word—"I'm sorry, but that doesn't really make any sense. Percy's been here for eight, nine years. His mom is alive. In fact, we just spoke with her this morning."
"You know, more importantly," said Percy delicately, "I don't have a sister."
The words hit Riverspawn like a sledgehammer, and for the first time I saw a kind of fury boil behind her eyes. "Well, how else do you explain this?" She closed her eyes and made some kind of fancy hand gesture, almost like she was unscrewing an invisible pickle jar. We all flinched as, one by one, the glasses of lemonade on the war table shattered, the liquid inside flying up to join an ever-growing bubble of lemonade that Riverspawn suspended in the air. We watched in astonishment as the bubble took on form after form: a horse, an icosahedron, a sword, a flower. Finally, when she had had enough of her cinematic demonstration, she flicked her fingers down and the blob sped down towards the table at the speed of sound.
"Omigod please no," gasped Percy, and he flung an arm out to stop the bubble. Gingerly he smushed the lemonade into a smaller ball and, failing a place to put a ball of magically-cohesive liquid, he held it in his arms like a basketball.
"My name is Riverspawn Jackson," smirked the girl triumphantly, "and I'm a daughter of Poseidon, sister to Percy Jackson, and commander of water."
I flashed back to ten years ago, when Poseidon had claimed Percy at the creek. How Chiron had denoted his parentage reverently. How we had bowed.
Nothing like that happened here. Percy just scowled, but before he could say anything, Riverspawn had started speaking again. In her angelic demeanor, she turned to face Jason. Her eyes turned electric blue, and her aura changed too, filling with the ozone-smelling static that had become so familiar to me over the years. "But that's not it. I'm also a daughter of Zeus." Jason looked helplessly over at Thalia, who was sitting beside me in Artemis' honorary chair.
"No. What? How is that possible?" demanded Thalia with her arms crossed.
Riverspawn simpered. I wanted to smack that smug smile off her face. Another one of her rhetorical questions: "How is this possible?" She lifted her arms and the air crackled. Improbably, her hands were instantly cloaked with dark storm clouds, flickering with lightning. "Want more?" she asked to no one in particular with a laugh, and without waiting for an answer she redoubled her efforts, tripling the weight of the storm. Percy and Nico edged nervously away.
"Okay, that's enough," said Jason politely, but he was watching the eye of the storm—centered on her hands—like a hawk. Next to me, Katie Gardner scooted her chair back warily and whispered something in his ear. He took a breath and the wind that was developing around us slowed.
A bolt of electricity arced its way to the end of the table, but Thalia caught it with her fingers before it could hit us. "Hey!" she yelled furiously. "That's enough!" Thalia slammed her hand on the table and hit Riverspawn square in the chest with the lightning, but she just laughed delightedly and let her arms down. The storm dissipated. Percy gave me a pleading look, like How is this happening?
"Don't tell me you're a daughter of Hades too," sniped Nico across from me. I wish he hadn't said that, because Riverspawn reacted like Christmas had come early.
"Actually!" she squealed, and stamped her foot. Her eyes flickered, then melted into a cool obsidian. Suddenly, the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees. The shadows bent and contorted around her, and when they finished, Riverspawn opened her fists and poured hundreds of exquisitely-cut precious gems onto the table.
"Yeah, fine, that's enough of that," said Nico quickly, and he looked under the table and waved his hand a couple times. I didn't know exactly what he did, but just then there was a sickening crunch and a ghostly scream, as if he had just closed up a portal to the Fields of Punishment.
Which I guess he may have.
Clarisse broke the long silence. "So… I think I speak for everyone when I ask, is that it? Can we discuss your existence now or do you have more annoying shows for us?"
Looking back on it, I have no idea why Riverspawn gave it long thought. "I have more shows for you," she finally decided, and Clarisse stifled a groan and sat back. "I'm also the daughter of Demeter!"
Nico had gathered a pile of the gems and was sullenly zapping them away one by one, but Riverspawn cleared the table with one wave of her hand. Where her hand had touched the table, flowers began sprouting like crazy, vibrant and eager like anything the Demeter kids had ever made. Katie leaned forward to inspect one of the blooms, then jerked hurriedly back as the leaves grew up towards her face. Katie waved her hand over the flowers to control their growth within a circle. "Awesome," she said bitterly. I'd never heard her use that tone before. "Thanks for ruining our table with root growth."
"I'm also a daughter of Ares, Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysus," Riverspawn rattled off on her fingers. With every word, her eyes changed: fiery red, burnished gold, sunny blue, and startlingly purple. "And I could show you right now but I don't think you want me to take a bow and arrow out right here."
"I absolutely do not want that," confirmed Will Solace with a tight smile.
Leo sat forward. "And Hephaestus?"
Riverspawn smiled, eyes flickering to match Leo's warm brown. She held up a hand. Percy's mouth opened to say something before flames started licking up her wrist, catching her fingers on fire, at which point he sat back in defeat.
Leo's breath caught. "You're… not supposed to be able to do that," he said unsurely.
"Why? Because you're the only son of Hephaestus born in three hundred years who can do this?" smiled Riverspawn sweetly. Something smelled like it was burning. I stifled a laugh as Percy looked over at her feet, panicked, and willed some lemonade to put out the fire.
"First of all, how did you know that about me, and second of all, yeah!" he exclaimed. "How can you be the daughter of all these gods? Zeus and Poseidon and Hades and Demeter and—"
"Athena and Aphrodite, too—"
"AND, hell, all of those, too!" Leo's voice had risen to a shout. "It's literally not possible that you have so many powers. I don't even want to think about what happened to make all of them your parents. I just—" He threw up his arms and slouched into his seat sullenly.
Riverspawn was quiet for a long time. I thought she was going to say something that redeemed this even a little bit, and then: "Oh," she said suddenly. "I almost forgot. I'm also the daughter of Artemis and Hera and Hestia. Those virgin goddesses, huh?"
The room let out an exasperated breath. Thalia screamed behind gritted teeth for a long second. "Just tell me how that happened," she said, with very measured syllables.
Riverspawn shrugged. Her eyes turned silvery yellow and she regarded her fingers absently, which were emitting rays of white light. "I don't really know. I guess things like this you just gotta accept, right?"
"Not really," replied Thalia shortly.
"So that's it?" asked Jason carefully. "Are you done with your whole parentage?"
She thought about it. "Yeah."
Percy and I met eyes as we deliberated what to do next. "Okay, Riverspawn," I said, standing up. I turned to the end of the table, where the minor god counselors were regarding me with some kind of relief. Maybe they were pleased that Riverspawn wasn't their ungodly half-sister. "Butch, why don't you… show her around the camp?"
"Really?" he asked pointedly, with a raised eyebrow. "Where is she going to stay?"
I hesitated. The Stoll brothers were looking up at me with panic. "Just show her around. Let her see the sights," I said again with finality. "We can decide if she'll get a cabin… later. We"—I looked around at the senior counselors, who were watching me with actual fear in their eyes—"have a lot to talk about."